Throughout more than a week’s worth of GTA 6 gameplay leaks, one thing that has especially soured the whole experience is the leaker’s repeated, tiresome attempts to push a memecoin. Cyberleek, as the person or group is known, has covered each of the 15 unauthorized clips they’ve released of the game with watermarks, a combination of half-assed messaging about the loss of physical media and, far more prominently, a QR code alongside thirsty begging for people to buy into a crypto token called $CYBERLEEK. Now, ahead of the official reveal of Grand Theft Auto VI on Netflix later this afternoon, it seems the grift might be coming to an end. Ahead of the official reveal on Netflix, Cyberleek has reportedly pulled out $250,000, seemingly leaving the coin in freefall, and strongly suggesting that the leaks are done.
According to a breakdown by GTAForums poster Vice Cit, who has been documenting Cyberleek’s crypto actions since August 20, Cyberleek transferred close to $250,000 in the early hours of August 27 into various cyber wallets, leading the coin’s value to plummet. However, rather than this representing a typical rug pull, it seems a slightly more cunning method may have been used to increase the value of the coin ahead of today’s withdrawals.
Memecoins inevitably follow a pattern. A novel coin is minted, those with inside information buy it up at a low price to create the impression of an investable opportunity, they then sell a proportion of these to those interested by this for a far higher price, eventually cashing out their reserves at what they assume will be the coin’s peak. At that point, the coin’s implied value goes into freefall, leaving late arrivals who spent lots of money on a now-worthless cryptocurrency holding the bag.
But that doesn’t appear to be what happened here. Instead, to convince investors that this was a more serious endeavor, Cyberleek and whoever they work with “burned” all their unsold reserve (in this case 270,000,000 tokens) to give the impression that they weren’t intending a rug pull. Instead, the quarter-million dollars has been built up from transaction fees (which are also $CYBERLEEK tokens) earned during the last week of trading, driven by the drip, drip, drip of leaks.
Coining it
But this marks the end for $CYBERLEEK, which at its peak was valued at $0.034, but is now sitting below $0.005, representing a fall of 86 percent. At one point, the coin had a market cap of $23.39 million, but that had dropped to $11m yesterday, and now sits at $3.23m and is falling fast. This all means the leaker has made off with at least a quarter of a million dollars, while those left holding the coins will be racing to dump them as word spreads.
Vice Cit has traced the transactions showing the fees were fairly evenly transferred to three different places, including CCE.Cash, a platform notorious for its “privacy” that makes trails far harder to follow. This all seems to have been fairly well planned and executed.
The question remains, was it worth it? $250,000 is certainly a lot of money, and perhaps the most that could have been made with this sort of grift. A rug pull could have potentially made lots more, were it not for the fact that the whole project looked like it was always intended to be one, meaning investors were already incredibly wary. By burning the reserves (valued at over a million dollars), it gave the impression that there were longer-term plans for the token, allowing transaction fees to build up to a meaningful amount, and likely led to a bigger payout than trying to pull faster than investors could dump would have. But Rockstar and Take-Two are determined to find the person or people responsible, and authorities will be able to trace these transactions and subpoena platforms for details, meaning any mistakes could be vastly more costly.
Footage massage
This also leaves lots of questions about exactly how Cyberleek was sourcing these leaks. If they had full code, as they outright stated they did, claiming it was a “recent” build and that “the game is not ready at all,” then why would they stop here, even with the Netflix reveal? Why were there no mission or story details? Why did we not see any footage of the game being played as Lucia? Why did they only show us a single cutscene from the prologue, and then release that as their finale? It all suggests either limited access to the code, or very limited tester code.
Also, those watermarked messages were getting increasingly desperate in their demands that viewers back the token, suggesting that perhaps the well was running dry. The final message was the most embarrassing, pretending to give a shit about the crunch under which Rockstar staff have to work, then incongruously adding, “Trading volume/price is how CL measures your support. CL will not continue without support. You decide.” Instead it seems that after one final attempt to pump, they decided for themselves.
